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Live - Let's Go Sailing @ Stubbs | Austin

Let's Go Sailing is not a dark group. Shana Levy's oh-so-sweet pop melodies are meant for the outdoors on a sunny afternoon, not the dim lit interiors of Stubb's indoor stage. But that doesn't mean it didn't work, because over the course of their nearly hour-long set, Let's Go Sailing provided rainbows. Rainbows and sunshine and the greenest grass all cut together from construction paper to form a bright collage of happiness.

To start off with, I wasn't sure how the turn out was going to be, any show on a Thursday night at the indoor stage of Stubb's tends to be hit or miss. Attendance is a weird phenomenon, massing together one minute, scattering about the next. As I waited for the show to begin, there were a handful of devoted fans lining the perimeter of the room, chatting away. In fact, there was so much chatter that we hardly realized Shana and her ragtag group had even begun, her almost mousy voice announcing it over the PA. Starting off with a couple of very mellow tunes, and a splendid cut of "Icicles," they were off to a great start. I turned around to eye the crowd and was pleased to find that its numbers had nearly tripled in the time since the start.

As the brightness continued my powers of deciphering the obvious took hold. There seemed to be an ever-revolving door of come-to-help musicians joining Let's Go Sailing up on stage. Shana made an announcement halfway through that their tour drummer had to take off back home recently so they would make do. Constantly flipping duties on bass and drums, or sometimes playing both at the same time, they really coped pretty well. Sometimes Joel Calvin of Austin's Oh No! Oh My! would jump on the skins (he would later actually sit behind them, as jumping on them proved to be a terrible idea).

Gliding through sweet renditions of "Sideways" and "Heart Condition," Shana and company really pulled the whole thing off without a noticeable hitch. There were moments here and there were you might think they were still rehearsing with new band members, which they pretty much were. Talking with Shana afterwards, she vented a couple frustrations at the absence of a key member, and the small window with which they made the night's final lineup. But the cast of Oh No! Oh My! filled in nicely and in the end though she was reassured, both by the performances, by me, and by the sizeable crowd that ended up in attendance. She mentioned that this would be one of the last shows of this tour and that she was ready to get back home.

And after that...

Well, she's got a whole new album's worth of material written she says, but there should be at least another tour with her bright, and infectiously happy, The Chaos In Order. Here's hoping the sunshine doesn't stop.